For me today has been a full writing day. Woke up at 2:15 a.m., got out of bed, sat down right here at the computer, and proceeded to finally draft out a synopsis for my novel. It’s only been how many years since I’ve been trying to do this? Mary Buckham’s workshop pulled it all together for me. I finally pulled together the templates – In the Beginning, Internal template, External template, Role template, Protagonist template, Antagonist template, Villain template … and more .. the Black Moment template and the Resolution template … not to mention a 93 page ‘Sins of the Synopsis’ from Mary. I pulled it together out of necessity. My facts were running together in a pitiful pattern. Finally, I got down what I thought was ‘just the facts’ as Jack Friday used to say on Dragnet. (Oops, am I dating myself?). My first attempt at synopsis (in this on-line class) came to just under 1500 words, but our goal was to boil it down to 500 words, and I just did that. But it’s now 8:17 p.m., and I long for a hot bath. I did, no kidding, get up at 2:15 a.m. Sat down here, started working. Got up to throw on some sweats and hustle off to walk at the mall wtih a friend, then came back until 2:45 and left for a haircut … back home, back here, more synopsis. Finally, finally I boiled this down to only 500 words. Have posted it to Mary.

Am expecting her to let me know I’ve mistakenly removed some of the emotion, all of the conflict, and any suggestion of humor. What’s a writer to do? I’ll just have to wait and see!